Lew Wolff, John Fisher: Step up to the plate or let someone else try. That was the message delivered by a group of Oakland’s top business leaders Thursday morning to the owners of the A’s.

“We want the Athletics to stay in this town,” said Clorox CEO Don Knauss, the lead organizer of the gathering of business leaders held in the lobby of his company’s headquarters in downtown Oakland.

To keep the team here, Knauss said, Oakland’s business leaders are eager to work with Wolff and Fisher.

But if the co-owners can’t commit to Oakland or don’t want to, he continued, a group of investors from the Bay Area and elsewhere in California are willing to buy the A’s to keep the team here. It was not clear how much the potential buyers would be willing to pay for a new ballpark. And Knauss declined to discuss details, saying the preference is to work with the current owners before revealing specifics about possible investors.

“We are more than willing to sit down and talk,” Knauss told executives from a dozen Oakland-based companies who were there to show their support on behalf of the most recognizable brand names in the city, including Kaiser Permanente, Safeway, Pandora Internet Radio, Cost Plus World Market and Signature Development.

Some had contributed to a $1 million pledge made in 2009 when Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig appointed a three-man committee to evaluate the A’s Bay Area choices.

Thursday’s “public display of affection,” as Knauss called it, was clearly intended to open up a new channel with him and send a signal to Selig in advance of the May baseball ownership meeting, where the A’s future home could be a topic for discussion.

Predictions that the matter would be on the agenda at previous ownership meetings proved not to be true.

Mayor Jean Quan said she has not met face-to-face with Wolff since the previous summer but is “in constant communication” with Major League Baseball.

Wearing an A’s jersey, Quan arrived at the gathering with City Manager Deanna Santana, Community and Economic Development Director Fred Blackwell and City Councilman Larry Reid.

Quan said she had breakfast with “one of the main owners” of the San Francisco Giants recently, who was “adamant” that the Giants would not give up their territorial rights to Santa Clara County.

The Giant’s claim to the South Bay is a major obstacle to Wolff’s intention to move the team to San Jose and rumored to be the reason Selig has been reluctant to make a decision about the A’s future home.

Wolff said the A’s are not for sale and that no one has approached him about buying the team.

“We are not sellers,” he said by phone Thursday, adding that the intention is to own the team for at least another generation, preferably in the Bay Area.

If Selig says no to San Jose, “We have no plan B,” Wolff said. “But it can’t be in Oakland.”

Fisher did not respond to a message left with his staff.

“MLB has no choice. The A’s have to make it work in Oakland,” said Gary Rogers, former Dreyer’s chief executive and a member of the Safeway board of directors. He also is a real estate developer and owns an office complex on Clay Street next to the ferry dock at Jack London Square.

“This is not an easy project,” Rogers said. “But none of these projects ever are.”

With a franchise value of $321 million, according to a 2012 Forbes estimate, the A’s have slipped to the bottom of the magazine’s list of 30 MLB teams.

But many of the businesses represented Thursday stand to gain from the A’s staying in Oakland, especially if a new ballpark comes with the commitment.

The corporations, Knauss said, wanted to send a clear message to the team’s owners that they are “open for business” and willing to put their corporate dollars to work to keep the A’s in Oakland.